☕️ CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT ☙ Thursday, October 30, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Trump caps Asia tour with the Big Moment™ corporate media prayed would flop but didn’t; wins fans across Asia; red-state migration surges; another leader folds; and HHS targets Big Pharma profits.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! In today’s terrific roundup: Trump crowns whirlwind Asian trade tour with more deals and the Big Moment,™ which corporate media hoped would be his undoing, but he deliciously turned the tables; President wins converts all over Asia; top ten states where Americans want to move share a lot in common, and it has much to do with political persuasions; another major leader caves to Trump demands and real estate investors celebrate; and HHS takes aim at another Big Pharma profit pot, pleasing patients and payors.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Ahead of schedule, President Trump again defied experts’ predictions that his trade negotiations were hopelessly mired in mutual malaise and would probably conclude in a nasty fistfight. Instead, CNBC’s astonishing headline this morning said, “Xi-Trump meeting sparks optimism in China amid hope for lower tariffs and a ‘honeymoon’ in ties.” CNBC now faces lawsuits because legally, the word ‘optimism’ is banned in corporate media headlines unless used ironically. We begin with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who gifted President Trump with … wait for it … a gold crown.

President Trump’s new monarchical headpiece is a faithful replica of the largest known crown worn by a famous South Korean king (a real one) from around the 500’s AD, and which “symbolizes the divine connection between the authority of the heavens and sovereignty on earth.” In other words, South Korea just massively trolled all of Trump’s silly “No Kings” critics.

Trump did not try it on. At least, not in front of cameras.

Apart from free crowns, the President negotiated South Korea’s one-time payment of $350 billion as consideration for slightly lowering its tariff rate, which is a carefully calculated figure that Trump just made up. In other words, Trump created $350 billion in value for America literally out of thin air. Critics complained bitterly that it was a “mafia-style, protection racket shakedown”— but if gold crowns are any sign, the South Koreans seem pretty happy about it.

Remember— Trump only set out on this surprise Asian trip on Friday night.

🔥 Later yesterday came the trip’s pièce de résistance (a seven-syllable French expression translating to “run away toward the food!”), the moment the media had impatiently been waiting for, drooling in delirious anticipation and hope beyond hope that Trump would finally meet his match and be schooled by the lone World leader who still seems to have some fight left in him and has been standing up to the American President: President Xi of China.

Welp, the media was disappointed again. (TAW.) The leaders of the two most important countries in the world conferred for 90 minutes with the fierce intensity of a small group of teenage boys outside a convenience store debating who most resembles the fake ID and should therefore buy the beer. In this case, it was President Trump, and he triumphantly emerged with a 12-pack of Natural Lite and a free bottle opener. (I speak metaphorically, of course.)

While in South Korea (neutral ground slightly tilted toward the US), Trump and Xi held the long-advertised meeting, prompted by China’s surprise move to cut America off from hard-to-get industrial magnets, which apparently are a much bigger deal than you would probably think. Trump had responded by jacking up China’s already-high tariff rates and launching a withering fusillade of social media commentary, all of which tricked the Democrats into believing that Trump had finally stumbled into a trade disaster.

Instead, according to this morning’s Times, China not only agreed to delay any changes to its magnet (“rare earths”) policies by a full year (by which point nobody will care), but also committed to yet more fentanyl-reducing policies. More tangibly, China agreed to buy “massive amounts” of American soybeans and other unnamed farm products.

For America’s part, Trump agreed to lower China’s tariff rate from 57% to 47% and to postpone special fees that he threatened to levy against Chinese ships docking in US ports —again, both were leverage Trump created from literally nothing— and agreed to consider loosening export controls on Nvidia’s AI chips (which he just ‘encouraged’ to move from Taiwan to Arizona).

In other words, the “looming trade disaster” was quickly resolved, purely using free leverage that President Trump created all by himself.

Democrats, whose primary characteristic is always finding something that can be improved, were not optimistic. Senator and member of the weasel family Chris Coons (D-Del.) called the deal a tragic mistake: “It would be a tragic mistake for President Trump, in order to get some soybean orders out of China, to sell them these critical cutting-edge A.I. chips.”

Trump can please the whole world, but he can never please Democrats.

🔥 To me, the most fascinating bit of reporting appeared in CNBC’s story. It was right in the lead sentence: “Many people in China cheered the meeting Thursday between President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump.”

In other words —and terrifying Democrats more than anything else— everyday Chinese are also learning to love the American President. CNBC reported that the most-viewed hashtag on China’s social media platform Weibo was about the two leaders’ summit meeting. (The next one down was, ‘Beijing woman saves scalded cat from trying dryer experience.’) User comments about the summit were roundly optimistic, such as “long live China-U.S. friendship” and “China-U.S. mutual success.”

Economist and frequent social media commentator Song Qinghui, wrote (in Chinese), “Look forward to the early arrival of the China-U.S. honeymoon period.”

In China, the fastest way to lose your ability to travel, buy groceries, or ride a skateboard is to post something the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t like. Thus, we can infer that, if Chinese people feel free to praise the summit and a partnership with the US, then that is also the official sentiment of the Chinese government.

Indeed, China’s official readout of Xi’s opening remarks after the meeting said Beijing was ready to work with Washington, and that “China’s development and revitalization goes hand in hand with President Trump’s vision to ‘Make America Great Again.’” The Chinese are not usually generous with details, and almost never suggest they are trying to help make America great, so it’s a big deal that they included Xi’s buoyant comments.

The bottom line is that between Saturday and this morning, Trump defused the looming trade disaster, secured another $1 trillion in domestic investment, inked four new rare-earth agreements, and persuaded the Chinese to buy more of our agricultural products. All he really conceded for those things was spinning the dials on his tariff dashboard again.

In short, President Xi just dashed Democrat dreams that China would defy Trump and break his unbroken winning streak. Now all they have is the government shutdown, and you know how that unfortunate blunder is going for them.

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CNBC ran a puffy story yesterday headlined, “This is the No. 1 state Americans want to move to most: People are ‘trading square footage for quality of life.’” What do you notice in common about 80% of the top ten destination states?

There’s an old saying about people “voting with their feet,” which I can’t remember exactly how it goes, but the whole idea sounds extremely awkward and probably unhygienic. Use your hands, people.

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Speaking of persons the Democrats prayed would oppose Trump, CNN ran a story yesterday headlined, “Fed cuts rates to lowest level in three years.” Media’s most splendid news during the summer was the public battle between President Trump and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, 96. Powell publicly and loudly defied President Trump’s demands for lower interest rates, delighting Democrats. So Trump commenced investigations of the Fed’s luxurious, marble-clad office building and one of its Fed Governors, Lisa Cook, for Letitia James-style mortgage fraud. Powell caved.

More importantly, in early September, Trump asked the Supreme Court to decide whether the President of the United States can fire Fed officials, or if they are a separate kingdom like Monaco, or Dulac from the Shrek movies, and govern themselves. (With or without crowns or hardhats.) SCOTUS has scheduled oral arguments on that issue in January, which as Mr. Powell is keenly aware, will be here before you know it.

Under the relentless pressure of one damned thing after another, Lord Farquaad, I mean Lord Jerome, threw in the Egyptian cotton towel and, on September 17th, complied and cut rates by a quarter point. Yesterday, Federal Reserve officials voted for another quarter-point rate cut, lowering the benchmark lending rate to a range between 3.75% and 4%, which is now the lowest in three years.

Showing some remaining spirit, Powell also defiantly announced that no further rate cuts are expected this year. But the betting sites currently predict a 70% chance we’ll see another cut by December. So.

Economists are split. Some favor the cuts (and even more cuts), while others “worry” the cuts could spur inflation. Arguably, Powell’s slow rollout of interest rate cuts attempts to thread the needle by moving cautiously, quarter point by quarter point, and taking the economy’s temperature to see whether Trump was right, then moving to the next one.

The most immediate effect of lower interest rates bears on home mortgages, which have been quite high for recent times and have stymied the real-estate markets ever since Trump took office. The effect of Powell’s high interest rates was to increase the total cost of mortgages by doubling or tripling the fine print, which is still published in the contract using the same number of pages (93), and which on page 87 includes the clear legend (in 4-point type): “if you are reading this, run!”

Anyway, residential mortgage rates should start settling back down into ranges affordable by folks who aren’t Saudi oil billionaires. That lower financing cost should spur more home sales, delighting builders, loan officers, and day-drinking real estate agents who’ve been moonlighting as Uber drivers.

Bottom line: Trump wins again.

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Yesterday, the New York Times reported on the latest improvement from Kennedy’s HHS in a story headlined, “F.D.A. Moves to Speed Approvals for Cheaper Copycat Drugs.” Kennedy’s team just closed another profit-guaranteeing loophole for Big Pharma.

CLIP: Kennedy announces changes to rules around generic “biosimilars” (2:59).

Along with FDA chief Marty Makary, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced “reforms” to restore competition and lower drug costs for patients related to a broad category of “biologic” drugs.

Biologics are medical treatments made using living cells, rather than being chemically synthesized like traditional drugs. Popular and widely-prescribed biologics include treatments for everything like lupus, cancer, diabetes (insulin), arthritis, macular degeneration, monoclonal antibodies, and of course mRNA vaccines. Biologics are often given as infusions.

Many older biologics have passed out of patent. But there still aren’t any generic options, because the manufacturing process is much more complicated than for chemical-based drugs, and this somehow resulted in an even more complicated set of regulations for companies who want to make low-cost generics (called “biosimilars”).

Some conspiracy theorists speculated wildly that the regulations were designed to keep out competition and protect pharma profits even after the initial patent period.

Fixing it has never been an insurmountable challenge. Europe, for example, has much simpler regulations for biosimilars and thus, Europeans enjoy more generic options for these popular treatments, spurred along by their socialist medical systems that flat won’t pay for expensive drugs anyways.

FDA Commissioner Makary said the simplified rules should halve the current five- to eight-year timeline for biosimilar approval in the US. He predicted the changes would save biosimilar makers tens of millions of dollars in development costs, and that savings could theoretically be passed along to patients via their insurance companies, although it will probably require additional incentives in the form of electric cattle prods.

Anyway, despite widespread whining from Democrats claiming that Kennedy doesn’t believe in modern medicine and prefers holistic treatments made from cow dung and lightning bug excrescence, HHS continues to chip away at Big Pharma’s traditional fortress of Guaranteed Profit. As helpful as alternative treatments may be, many Americans still depend on these expensive categories of drugs, and this kind of common-sense reform is great news for them, and bad news for the giant, over-funded drugmakers.

Faster, please.

Have a terrific Thursday! Coffee & Covid shall return on Halloween (i.e. tomorrow morning), with a special spooky mashup of essential news and commentary.

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